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HR Nightmare for Estée Lauder – DSJ Prevention Tips

 

A top executive at beauty giant Estée Lauder has been suspended without pay following an Instagram post that contained the n-word. More recently, the company announced that the executive has since been forced out of the company through retirement.

Brand Faces Backlash

 

John Demsey who is Estée Lauder’s Group President is a long-term employee of the family-founded beauty business. He has worked with the Estée Lauder brand and MAC Cosmetics for more than two decades. Due to his notoriety in the industry, Demsey also accrued a large audience on his account, in the amount of 73,000 followers, all of whom potentially saw the post.

As a result of his post, the CEO Fabrizio Freda wrote an internal memo explaining that the content that was posted “does not represent the values of The Estée Lauder Companies.” No matter how the company swings this, the post is shedding a lot of negative light on the brand, especially as they have worked with a very diverse range of women as ambassadors or collaborators such as Mary J. Blige, Rihanna, and Saweetie.

Implementing a Social Media Policy

 

When done correctly, a social media policy should not place limitations on your employees’ creative freedom rather, it spells out what is and is not appropriate for employees to post about their company on social networks. This is key, as implementing a low-quality policy may cause more harm than good if employees feel their freedoms are restricted.

For example, Best Buy asks that their employees “differentiate themselves and state their tweets and posts are theirs — and theirs alone — and not associated with Best Buy.”

A social media policy can prevent a PR crisis as a result of an offensive post. The policy should reiterate that the employees should not write anything that they wouldn’t want to be published to the media.

Questions? Concerns? Call DSJ at 516-541-6549 and visit our website for more information.
 
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